Libs Blame Our “Imam Obama” for Confusion Over Obama’s Religion

May 19, 2011

RUSH: This mosque business is not going away and there’s a reason why it’s not going away, and all over the Drive-By Media yesterday, ‘The people just don’t understand.’ The media don’t understand why people are saying what they’re saying in these polls. They don’t understand why 20% think Obama is a Muslim, fewer and fewer think he’s a Christian, and it’s really not hard to understand. You know, we, folks, have not forgotten Jeremiah Wright. When Obama says he’s a Christian there are a lot of people that don’t believe him, and just because he got elected president doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten it. It’s not really complicated out here, but yet they’re just beside themselves, and of course who are they blaming for this? Your host, the harmless, lovable little fuzzball, El Rushbo. This is Juan Williams yesterday morning on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace: ‘Juan, why would it be growing? I mean he’s been in office a year and a half. Would you think people would have more of a sense of who he is by now?’

WILLIAMS: I don’t know if you noticed, but his approval ratings have been sinking, and as his approval ratings have been sinking I think more people feel, you know, absolutely unleashed in terms of their criticism and I think the stuff that’s coming from the right wing from Rush Limbaugh and the like, you know, Imam Obama.

RUSH: Well, I’m happy to be noted, and I’m happy they’ve heard about this. It’s obviously irritating them, this Imam Obama business, but I’ve only been saying that since last week, and his numbers have been plunging for much longer than that. People have long doubted Obama when he says he’s a Christian, long before we got in the game here with the media tweak of Imam Obama. Barack Obama was baptized Christian by a man who Calypso Louie gave a lifetime achievement award. That would be the Reverend Wright. He was baptized Christian by a man who gave Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award named after him, the Jeremiah Wright Award. Jeremiah Wright, people heard the tapes, mainstream ruling class try to ignore them. ‘Ah, doesn’t, that’s a long time ago. Obama didn’t hear a word Wright said in 20 years.’ We don’t believe that. It’s just that simple. We don’t believe that Obama didn’t hear a word that Jeremiah Wright said for 20 years. We don’t believe Obama when he says that he didn’t hear any of that incendiary language when he was in the church. We just don’t believe it. It’s no more complicated than that. We’re not that gullible. Okay, so Juan Williams is all upset, Imam Obama. Last Friday, CNN, John King’s USA had this exchange with Amy Goodman who’s the host of something called Democracy Now.

KING: If people are confused, if Americans are confused, Amy Goodman, about their president’s faith, whose fault is that?

GOODMAN: Well, I think when you have somebody like Rush Limbaugh talking about Imam Obama, you know, the problem with that is it’s not true.

RUSH: Why are you people asking this question in the first place? If people are confused, if Americans are confused, Amy Goodman, about the president’s faith, might it be the president’s problem? I’ll tell you, there are a lot of media people who are just beside themselves that Obama didn’t clear up the mosque controversy before hitting his vacation. Why didn’t he explain this? He throws that time bomb in there about supporting the mosque and then tries to walk it back and then says no, I really meant it, then leaves it hanging while he goes on vacation. The media says, ‘I don’t understand why he goes on vacation.’ Do you maybe think he meant to say it? Do you think maybe it was on the teleprompter for a reason? He said it at a dinner. It was on the prompter. You think maybe he meant to say it? But why are none of these problems Obama’s? I mean after all, I’m just an entertainer. Half the time these people say I’m just an entertainer, people don’t take me seriously. I come along with the Media Tweak of the Day, Imam Obama, and now it’s my fault that some people don’t think Obama’s a Christian? What about his role in all this?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Again, the Boston Herald: ‘Obama: Tee-ing Off Nation, 1 Sunday at a Time — Another Sunday, another missed opportunity for President Obama to prove to America he’s not a Muslim.’ That’s how it begins, and they don’t quote me in this. Attention Juan Williams, the Boston Herald does not blame me. They actually blame Obama. He’s going to play golf on Our Lady of the Fairways instead of going to church. Despite every media person last week, and we played the audio sound bites: ‘Please, please, just go to church, pick a church, grab a big Bible, get a 20-pound Bible and lug it in there in a wheelbarrow if you have to, but go to church this Sunday and let people see you.’ What is the only proof we have that Obama’s a Christian? Well, okay, his word, his word. But Jeremiah Wright is the only proof that we have that he’s a Christian. Obama described Wright as his spiritual mentor. Well, sorry, media, we’ve heard Jeremiah Wright. We know what Jeremiah Wright said. We know what he thinks of America. By the way, did Howard Dean say anything about Scott Brown winning the Ted Kennedy seat? I wonder what his prediction was on Martha Coakley holding that seat?

‘Instead of attending church services at one of the dozens and dozens of quaint, island Christian churches yesterday morning, the commander in chief hit Our Lady of the Fairways, aka the Vineyard Golf Club, yet again, to play 18. Obama again teed off with Chicago pal Eric Whitaker and aide Marvin Nicholson. Rounding out the foursome was Bill Lewis, a regular Vineyard vacationer who played with Obama and Whitaker last year. Once again, the press corps was kept far, far away from the presidential golf party.’ By the way, the Secret Service is riding along in golf carts now rather than SUVs. The golf course owners got a little mad at SUVs in the fairways, which used to happen, and when you follow Obama around you gotta go into the woods which is where his tee shot ends up a lot of times and you never know what’s in the woods out there.

I’ve played this course a number of times. We put anti-aircraft chaff, anti-aircraft missile chaff on EIB One when we go in there. It’s Martha’s Vineyard. You never know when these surface-to-air missiles are going to be launched by the locals. I mean Skip Gates lives in there, you never know. We played this golf course, and it’s a tough golf course. It is very long and very narrow in places, a tough golf course with a lot of fescue, a lot of real hard rough. This is not a fun golf course for a rank amateur, I guarantee you. If you can’t hit the ball — you’re talking 25 or 30-yard-wide fairways. I mean that’s the width of fairways at the US Open and once you get in the rough, I mean it is… you can lose your ball in the rough at the Vineyard Golf Club. It’s a fun course to play, it’s a great clubhouse and all that.

‘The president’s handlers have said Obama doesn’t attend services regularly because he doesn’t want to be ‘hugely disruptive to congregations.’ This is apparently not an issue on the golf course. Especially now that the Secret Service is following the boss in golf carts instead of those giant SUVs they drove down the fairways last year.’ This is a pretty tough piece, Boston Herald. I mean Our Lady of the Fairways, Obama not going to church, hitting the golf course. Let me tell you something. Churches and golf courses both have people addressing the Lord frequently. People on golf courses talk to God constantly. I’m sure Obama’s doing the same thing.

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RUSH: I didn’t see Fox News Sunday, the original broadcast. I caught a little bit of it later on, but I had a lot of e-mail asking, ‘Doesn’t Juan Williams make you mad?’ No. Folks, let me tell you something. You know, Robert Gibbs used a term a couple of weeks ago that made everybody on the left mad. He referred to the ‘professional left.’ Now, they exist, but you’re not supposed to talk about them. It’s, in a way, a secret. Now, I have described the professional left for you countless times over this program without actually using the terminology ‘the professional left.’ But who are the professional left? They are people that form basic nonprofit groups and think tanks with such sweet-sounding names as ‘The Center for American Progress’ when their purpose is to tear it down, and these people make a living off of disseminating propaganda.

They turn money into ideology. They ask for donations and they live off of it — and these are people who tell you they do it from the goodness of their heart and they don’t care about money. But they’re all over, the professional left, and Juan Williams is a member. And the professional left reads from a script. They are ideologues; they read from a script. Juan has a role to play, and when it comes to something like the mosque or questions of polling… Remember, by the way, it wasn’t us that brought up this whole notion of whether or not Obama’s a Christian. It was the Pew Center, part of the professional left. They’re supposedly ‘nonpartisan.’ The Pew Center for People and the Press went out and did a poll.

Now, why did they do a poll? There had to be a reason for this. Something had to make them ask the question. So they come back and their poll shows anywhere from 20 to 25% of the American people think he’s a Muslim and the number of people that think he’s a Christian is plummeting. It can’t be his fault, though. He can’t have any role in it. No, it’s gotta be me for saying ‘Imam Obama.’ The fact that this Amy Goodman blames me, too, tells me that talking points have gone out in the professional left: ‘Okay, this is what we’re gonna assign here as the explanation for this — and we’re also gonna chalk it up to stupid people. The American public is made up of stupid people.’

The professional left holds you in contempt. The professional left is ACORN. The professional left is all these militant environmental groups: The Sierra Club, Greenpeace. They’re all the professional left. They’re all 501(c)(3)s. They’re George Soros. People ask, ‘Why don’t the Republicans have these?’ It’s two different modes of thought. I’ve talked about this in this analysis of that great piece in the American Spectator on the ruling class. We, you and I — members of the country class — are oriented toward merit. You know, we want to receive whatever accolades and rewards on the basis of substance. So, my job here is not to fund-raise or to advance an ideology.

I’m in radio. I have certain requirements, business requirements to succeed here and stay on the air. And I service those. And I happen to also have freedom to be honest. I combine my passions and desires to get what we get here, but I’m not collaborating. I don’t collaborate with anybody else to get a message out. A few people on the right do. But the professional left is all about collaboration, from the universities that train people to work in government (the bureaucrats and so forth). It’s all a giant organization and they have talking points, and they have the things that they’re going to say whether they believe them or not, whatever it takes to advance an agenda, to protect their leaders. So Juan Williams says: Well, it’s all Rush Limbaugh’s fault.

I know Juan Williams. He’s interviewed me a couple times at Fox. And there have been many times over the course of, oh, recent years where I have received e-mail from people praising Juan Williams because he has said things that let me know that when he is thinking independently he’s not one of these knee-jerk, left-wing reactionaries reading from the talking points fax that’s gone out. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence can know that Obama’s approval numbers have been plummeting, and the main reason is that people are waking up. He’s not who he said he was. People simply don’t believe him anymore. They bought it during the campaign but they don’t believe it anymore. They’re questioning a lot of things that he says because of things he believes. He said he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, and people don’t want that in a leader — and they don’t like having the doubt that he’s a Christian. Juan Williams knows it ain’t ’cause-a me. He knows I’m not the reason this is happening. He just has to say it.

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RUSH: Remember, Juan Williams defended me — major, big time — back in October of 2009, and he was told by another black journalist to go ‘back on the porch.’ He was accused of being an Uncle Tom when he defended me against something. I understand the game. That was during the St. Louis Rams scandal. It was during that whole trumped up, I-never-said-it bunch of quotes they attributed to me. Juan Williams had the audacity to point out the fact that I had not coined the ‘Magic Negro’ phrase for Obama, that an LA Times commentator had, and when Juan Williams pointed that out he was going against the grain of the professional left and the ruling class. ‘Go back on the porch, Juan! Go back to the porch.’ The die had been cast; the marching orders went out: ‘Use these made-up Limbaugh quotes! Say Limbaugh said this! We know he didn’t say it but we’re going to say he did,’ and every liberal sports journalist in the country went with it. This guy in St. Louis, they all went with it. Juan Williams said I never said these things and didn’t coin the term ‘Magic Negro.’ They said, ‘Juan, go sit on the porch.’

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RUSH: The media is terribly, terribly upset that Obama flew off on vacation and didn’t close the loop on the mosque at Ground Zero controversy. By the way, how many mosques are there in Martha’s Vineyard? (interruption) I don’t know. Are there any in Martha’s Vineyard? We discussed last year Martha’s Vineyard is actually the home of a long-established, quote, unquote, ‘black enclave.’ It’s called Oak Bluffs. That’s where ‘Skip’ Gates lives.

Oak Bluffs, the long established black enclave at Martha’s Vineyard, started out as a Christian prayer meeting camp. It was the ‘center of the thriving 19th century Methodist movement. In the area known now as the Martha’s Vineyard Campground Meeting Association (MVCMA) or ‘The Campground,’ members of the Methodist church would come each summer to pitch tents and have open air meetings. As these meetings became more and more popular, returning visitors began replacing the tents with small wooden buildings generally known now as Gingerbread Cottages,’ and the black enclave, Oak Bluffs, thus developed on Martha’s Vineyard. So I just wanna how many mosques are there on Martha’s Vineyard.

You can’t find any. Researchers even now are attempting to uncover the number of mosques. Check Hyannis Port, check Nantucket, and check Cape Cod while you’re at it. I mean, there are scores of mosques in New York City, not that far from Ground Zero. I’m just asking, here: Are there any mosques in Martha’s Vineyard or Hyannis Port near the Kennedy compound? By the way, Snerdley, the Justice Department is also seeking witch doctors. I’m serious, folks. They’re seeking witchdoctors to help some… (interruption) You don’t be down with the witchdoctor thing, yo? (interruption) You not down for Santeria? You not down…? (interruption) Okay. (interruption) You don’t play there? All right. ‘Homey don’t play Santeria. Homey don’t play witchdoctor, yo.’ There’s one mosque in all of Cape Cod, one mosque in all of Cape Cod. It’s the Islamic Center of Cape Cod in Osterville, Massachusetts. Osterville, Massachusetts? Osterville, Massachusetts. Yeah, they don’t actually have a building. They’re kinda loose right now, and that’s in the middle of the Cape. Here’s Mark Halperin this morning on Scarborough’s show, Morning Joe, on MSNBC during a discussion about Obama and the Ground Zero mosque.

HALPERIN: Maybe he’ll look in on this. He’s made this a national issue. It’s — it’s unresolved. He and Michael Bloomberg have to resolve it.

SCARBOROUGH: You’re shocked that the president went on vacation without clarifying this, aren’t you?

HALPERIN: I am. And I’m — and I’m shocked thaaaat he doesn’t see the day — day-to-day damage. And if he does see the day-to-day damage, I’m shocked that he’s not addressing it.

RUSH: See, this is where those of us in the real world listen to the ruling class media and we scratch our heads and say, ‘Do you really think this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing? Do you really think…?’ How can you tell us, Mark Halperin, all during the campaign that Obama is the smartest wizard ever, the most unifying man to ever trod American political soil — a man who is going to bridge all the divides; that’s postracial, post-American, postpartisan, postpolitical, postachievement; that he’s the smartest guy ever…? In fact, Margaret Carlson and others last week said on the mosque business: ‘It’s our fault. We just can’t keep up with him. He’s too smart. He needs to slow it down for our benefit.’

Now, how can you say that and be part of that line of thinking and then express shock that the most brilliant president we’ve ever had doesn’t close the loop on the mosque controversy that he started? Could it be, Mr. Halperin, he has got exactly what he wanted out of this? If you look at the country, Mark, and the rest of you in the media, you see a pretty divided place and you see a president who can see that it’s divided, and he doesn’t seem to care. In fact, he seems to be feeding off of the division. There’s so much division in the country that your own polling units are the ones asking the question: ‘Do you think Obama’s a Christian? Do you think Obama’s a Muslim?’

Your own polling units are asking this about the president of the United States, and you want to turn around and blame the people of the country here for bigotry, racism, or stupidity, or what have you? In fact, all you have to do is answer your own question. ‘I’m shocked that he doesn’t see the day-to-day damage that his public pronouncement caused’? Of course he sees it! He says it. He sees it. He knows what you guys are gonna do is blame me and others in the media while he’s out playing golf. He’ll be back in a week and he can feed off of it. It’s not really complicated at all. I just marvel here at these people in the press who, on the one hand, say this is the smartest guy we’ve ever had and on the other hand say he does dumb things every day that they just don’t understand.

You gotta stick with the ‘meme.’ The meme is he’s brilliant. So you gotta put everything under that umbrella. You gotta ask yourself: ‘What are you missing?’ like the rest of us. We’re too stupid to keep up with the fast brilliance of Obama. So what are we missing here? That needs to be the question, not why is he being stupid. (interruption) There are zero mosques on Martha’s Vineyard and zero mosques in Nantucket. Speak of the devil. From Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs blog… We’re going to see if this floats, if it floats up this week. ‘Newly Discovered Tapes Reveal Imam Rauf’s Support of Wahhabism &amp; Elimination of Israel — Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs reported:

”Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson [a terrorism expert] and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through the newly found material. Rauf is a ‘radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.’ Among the shocking revelations Emerson’s team will reveal next week — they found Rauf: Defending wahhabism — a puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia. Calling for the elimination of Israel by claiming a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State. Defending Bin Laden’s violence. Demonstrating that there is a lot more to this man than merely a cleric.” So we’ll see if this floats up.

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RUSH: It was from Thursday, October 15th last year, 2009, on the O’Reilly Factor, the host Ted Baxter talking to Juan Williams and the radio host Warren Ballentine about me. Ted Baxter said, ‘The reason that Limbaugh is not going to be able to buy into the NFL is because a bunch of made-up stuff became legend and he got hammered.’

BAXTER: Okay, we won’t look at the made-up stuff. Let’s look at him playing ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro” on his show. That’s not racial, either. It is racial to real black people.

WILLIAMS: Hey, Warren. Hey, Warren. You were saying that I was — my argument was a red herring. Maybe you should do some research, go back and find out that it was an article written by a black person headlined about ‘Barack the ‘Magic Negro.”

BAXTER: But he made it out of a song and play — he made it out of a song and played it on his show.

WILLIAMS: So what? He’s making fun of it.

BAXTER: Juan (cross-talk) it’s okay, you can go back to the porch.

RUSH: Juan, you can go to the back porch. There’s Juan Williams defending me. I like Juan Williams. When he starts spouting this: (pararphrasing) ‘Yeah, Obama’s numbers are tanking because of Rush Limbaugh and Imam Obama.’ He knows. He knows. I mean it’s just part of the game out there that they, the professional left have to play.

Tony in Miami as we start on the phones today, great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. Pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: It’s an honor. Just a couple of comments regarding Imam Rauf. Apparently he made some comments today that reiterate some things he said before concerning the purpose of this mosque is to build bridges, this whole notion of interfaith tolerance and yada yada yada. What just drives me absolutely bonkers about this is that if anybody reads the text of Islam, that’s the Koran and the Hadith, the Surahs, they do not espouse notions of tolerance, of interfaith and all the stuff that these folks on the left as well as the willful ignorant are spouting. It’s heartbreaking really because of the fact that it’s undermining our Constitution, our nation, our republic. If you know anything about Islam, it is not tolerant of other faiths. It certainly is not compatible with the Constitution, yet you get this constant repeated message, this mantra from the left, and it’s just —

RUSH: What does it tell you? What does it tell you that a mosque, a religious mosque has become a left versus right issue? What does it tell you about the left? The left doesn’t care about religious freedom 364 days of the year. The left that’s really bugged and bothered by the Christian right practicing their faith, they don’t like the Christian right. So here’s one day a year, one issue they happen to care about property rights, they don’t care about those, either, unless they’re in favor of the kangaroo rat owning the property or the snug rat, whatever the hell else that they defend. What does it tell you? And here comes the right, which happens to fall on the side of American tradition. What does it tell you? It should tell you who the American left is. Something else that I think ought to be picked up, ought to be noted about this, when all this kinda controversy comes up, when they hijack our jets and fly two of them into the World Trade Center, what’s the first thing our ruling class does? They convene seminars and say, ‘Why don’t they like us?’ Does Islam ever ask itself — again, with this mosque controversy, are the Islamists ever saying, ‘What is their problem with us?’ No, they’re not asking that question. They are accusing us of Islamophobia. So whereas, you know, some of us say, ‘Why do they hate us?’ They never ask that. They never ask, ‘What are we doing wrong?’ They never ask, ‘What could we do to appease these people?’ They don’t ask that question. We’re the ones that do that, think it’s relevant, means something.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, we just have done the research here. Seven mosques total in all of Massachusetts. There are over 30 mosques in Manhattan alone, and a hundred throughout the five boroughs. Now, in regards to the previous caller, if the builders of the mosque at Ground Zero, if they were really into bridge building, outreach, this is the perfect situation. Agree to move it. If that was really their purpose here, really into outreach, really, really wanna build a bridge to us, move it. That would be a magnificent gesture, but they’re not doing that, are they? So you have to question how much outreach is really involved here.